The Final Testament of the Holy Bible Read Free Page B

Firstwas right after he got his first paycheck. He came and switched the address in our files to an address in the Bronx. The previous one had been in Queens. I don’t know why but I was curious, so I looked up the address in Queens. It was a state-run transitional home, a place where they send men coming out of either prison, rehab, a homeless shelter, or a mental institution. I thought about looking into it more, but I had other things to worry about and Ben seemed fine. Second thing happened one day during lunch. I had a doctor’s appointment and had to leave the site. On my way to the subway, I saw Ben sitting on a bench a few blocks away. He was crying. It was the middle of the day, and he had seemed like his normal self when I had seen him earlier. I did a double take because I couldn’t believe it was him. But it was. He was sitting on a bench with his face in his hands and he was sobbing.
    The day of the accident was a beautiful spring day. It was sunny, no clouds, slight breeze, in the mid-70s. A perfect New York day, not one I thought would fucking blow up. I had never had a major accident on one of my sites before, and it was a point of great pride for me. I believed there wasn’t a building on earth that was worth sacrificing a life for, and I still believe it. Safety matters more than speed. Safety matters more than anything. It was one of the reasons I had been hired. Because the job was a sensitive issue in the community, and so many people were against it, the developer couldn’t afford to have anything go wrong. Accidents are the bestweapon community activists have against developers. While it would be nice to think developers care about safety, they don’t. Like almost everyone else in America, developers are fucking greedy. They care about money, and activists with weapons cost them money. My job was to stay on budget, stay on schedule, and keep that site safe.
    The skeleton was done. Forty stories of steel frame rising. We were putting in the windows, which were ten foot by ten foot mirrored panels. We had finished the first thirty-three stories without any problems, and we were installing on thirty-four. We’d lift seven panels at a time. Bundle them, secure them, rig them to a wire, bring them up with a crane. I’d done it literally thousands of times at job sites, and I had never had any problems.
    I don’t know what the fuck went wrong. Still don’t. We had investigators from the city, the state, and the insurance company all look at the rig, and nobody could figure it out. To this day, the cause in all of the paperwork is listed as unknown. I could call them and tell them that it didn’t matter what we did that day, that no rig would have held that glass, that there were other forces at work far beyond any that the city, state, or insurance company could muster, but they’d think I was crazy. And sometimes I’m not sure that I’m not. But that’s part of faith. Believing and knowing despite what other people say, and despite what the world might think of your beliefs.
    I was on the ground. Standing near our trailer, which was on the edge of the sidewalk. I was holding a clipboard, going over some budget numbers with one of our construction accountants. They blow an air horn right before any large load goes up, and the air horn went off. I looked up and the panels were slowly rising. We stop traffic when we lift panels, and there were no cars coming down the street. Most of the workers were standing around talking, which is what they did when work was halted. Ben was standing at the edge of the site, looking towards the stopped traffic, ready to stop anyone who might try to get around our traffic controller. Normally I would have gone back to the clipboard. But I felt something, something inevitable. If you can somehow feel fate, or destiny, or the power of the future, I felt it, very literally. And it made me watch. It forced me to do something that I normally wouldn’t do. I couldn’t